Organ donations in the United States
In 2021, the total number of organ donors in the U.S. was around 20,400. Although most organ donations are from the deceased, there were 5,971 kidney transplants from living donors. Organ donation in the United States is governed by the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA). This act was first enacted in 1968 and saw revisions in 1987 and 2006. UAGA permits adults to become organ donors and is an attempt to standardize state laws. As of 2017, UAGA has been established in some form in every U.S. state.How many organ transplants are performed each year and what do they cost?
Despite the introduction of the UAGA, the unmet need for organ donation is a growing concern. In 2021, the total number of organ transplants in the United States was over 41 thousand. However, there were around 105,700 U.S. candidates waiting for an organ donation as of November 2022, around 90 thousand of which were waiting for kidney donations. A kidney transplant in the United States costs an average of around 442,500 U.S. dollars. Kidney transplantations are one of the cheapest organ transplantations, along with pancreas and cornea transplants. The most expensive transplantation is a heart transplant, which costs an average of almost 1.7 million U.S. dollars.
